A node is a grouping of managed or unmanaged servers. You can add both managed and unmanaged nodes to your product topology. If you add a new node for an existing WebSphere® application server to the network deployment cell, you add a managed node. If you create a node in the topology for managing web servers or servers other than WebSphere application servers, you add an unmanaged node. You can add, configure, remove, and otherwise work with nodes, node agents, and node groups.
A node is a logical grouping of managed servers.
A node group is a collection of managed nodes. Managed nodes are WebSphere Application Server nodes. A node group defines a boundary for server cluster formation.
Use node groups to define groups of nodes that are capable of hosting members of the same cluster. An application that is deployed to a cluster must be capable of running on any of the cluster members. The node that hosts each of the cluster members must be configured with software and settings that are necessary to support the application.
You can add a node, select the discovery protocol for a node, define a custom property for a node, stop servers on a node, and remove a node.
After creating a profile or adding a node, the host name of the server or its ports might be incorrect. You can follow the examples to change the server host name using command line tools and the wsadmin scripting tool, and the host name of the server ports using the administrative console and command line tools.
You can start a node by using the startNode command. You can stop a node by using the stopNode command. Starting and stopping a node is applicable only if your profile, also known as a node, is added to a WebSphere Application Server WebSphere Application Server, Network Deployment domain or cell.
This task discusses how to create and manage node groups.
Use this topic to manage the nodes in your node groups by viewing, adding or deleting the nodes in a node group.
Node agents are administrative agents that represent a node to your system and manage the servers on that node. Node agents monitor application servers on a host system and route administrative requests to servers.
Configuration data for the WebSphere Application Server product resides in files. Two services help you reconfigure and otherwise manage these files: the file transfer service and file synchronization service.